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A global helium shortage has doctors worried about one of the natural gas’s most essential, and perhaps unexpected, uses: MRIs.. Strange as it sounds, the lighter-than-air element that gives ...
Helium also has a very low boiling point (-268.9°C or -452°F), allowing it to remain a gas even in super-cold environments, an important feature because many rocket fuels are stored in that ...
A major advantage is that this gas is noncombustible. But the use of helium has some disadvantages, too: The diffusion issue shared with hydrogen (though, as helium's molecular radius (138 pm) is smaller, it diffuses through more materials than hydrogen [4]). Helium is expensive. Although abundant in the universe, helium is very scarce on Earth.
Of the 2014 world helium total production of about 32 million kg (180 million standard cubic meters) helium per year, the largest use (about 32% of the total in 2014) is in cryogenic applications, most of which involves cooling the superconducting magnets in medical MRI scanners and NMR spectrometers. [163]
[6] [4] For researchers, helium is irreplaceable because it is essential for producing very low temperatures. [4] In recent years, concerns about high prices and the occurrence of a shortage in 2006-7 have also contributed to calls for helium conservation and measures to lower the price of helium for researchers from these organisations. [4]
Helium 3 is rare on Earth, primarily produced by the radioactive decay of tritium, but it does reside in abundance in the lunar regolith, deposited by billions of years of solar wind.
Pure-play helium, also known as primary helium or green helium is helium that is extracted from the earth as the main product. Since the early 20th century, most of the world's helium supply has been extracted from natural gas as part of the nitrogen rejection process. The preference for primary helium is driven by the planned reduction in use ...
Each atom of helium-4 is a boson particle, by virtue of its integer spin. A helium-3 atom is a fermion particle; it can form bosons only by pairing with another particle like itself, which occurs at much lower temperatures. The discovery of superfluidity in helium-3 was the basis for the award of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics. [1]